Interview: Paul Wilkes, MyMarketer

Here Richard Liew talks with Paul Wilkes, founder and CEO at national marketing consultancy company MyMarketer. In the interview Paul talks about the unique business model behind MyMarketer which enables professional marketers to set up and run their own marketing businesses with the support of an established national brand and operating model.

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Richard Liew: For those who haven’t heard of MyMarketer. Who exactly are you and what do you do?

Paul Wilkes: There’s a couple of answers, depending on who we’re talking to and I guess that that the fact that there’s two answers is kind of what makes us unique. When we’re talking to marketers about our business ownership opportunity the simple explanation is that we’re the business that helps experienced marketers be in business on their own, but not be on their own.

So MyMarketer is primarily a business that’s built to help marketers run their own marketing business. And I think in that regard that’s what makes us incredibly unique. We’ve been in the business nearly 20 years and we don’t think there’s anyone else doing that in the world of marketing.

But obviously on its own that explanation doesn’t work so when we’re talking to potential customers about what we do as a marketing business, our proposition is pretty simple and clear. We become your marketing person or team, depending on the numbers of people we put into the client business.

Whilst on the sort of face about this client pitch isn’t overly unique, I think the way we do it as a business is extremely unique… We talk a lot about the thinking and the doing. We’re sort of a strategist on one hand, but marketing and [communications] “doers” on the other, and we deliver significant business value. Just as importantly we do it in a pretty cost effective way.

Richard Liew: I’m quite curious about your model because marketers can add significant value, as you point out. And I’m just wondering for anyone out there who is in the marketing profession and who’s considered in the past, either going out on their own or sitting up their own agency, can you explain a little bit about the MyMarketer model and what you can offer to those types of people?

Paul Wilkes: We know that starting any business is damn difficult. And we know that starting a business in this industry is probably more difficult than most. I mean, that’s the reality of it. But the heart of the business model is about this concept of sharing. No one person is good at everything and being on your being in a business on your own is tough. So we’ve addressed this and gone with the idea of “one plus one equals three.”

It’s a kind of a cheesy way of explaining it but that’s actually the heart and soul of our business.

So first and foremost people come into this business if they love the idea of not being on their own, and having people, resources and support.

We talk a lot about replacing the concept of “I” versus “we” as we believe that the concept of “we” is a much, much more powerful proposition.

At an operational level we’ve developed a central engine with a whole bunch of value that we share with other marketers to help them run their business. We talk about things like centralised brand, software, tools and “recipes” which is the word we use inside the business to talk about the things we’ve developed over the years to help drive efficiency.

We help them with a team and obviously with getting clients. Because that’s a cornerstone to profitability.

We also help them with general support and training, and not just initially when they join, but ongoing. So this there’s a really powerful kind of engine that effectively people are buying into. And that’s the best way to explain how we operate – legally speaking, the business is actually a franchise.

If someone’s out there thinking about either starting their own marketing business or they’ve been in their own marketing business, and they’re struggling with some of these things we’ve talked about – talk to us. Because we believe it’s a whole lot easier to run a very successful marketing business alongside us than it is to do it on your own.

Richard Liew: There’s a couple of great points you raise there for people who haven’t started a business by themselves before. They’ve probably got all the capability and generally, they’re going to be quite good at their craft or their domain. So they actually have everything it takes from that side. But the whole notion of stepping out of your comfort zone, taking the risk, setting up your own thing, can really put people off which is a shame to me as it’s limiting people’s potential.

Paul Wilkes: As an example, I made contact with someone through LinkedIn the other day and she’s a senior marketer. And when I talked to her I said, I really feel strongly that being a experienced marketer, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re good at running a marketing business.

They’re not two separate things, but they’re two very different things to talk about. Doing the marketing work for your client is one thing, but running a successful business is actually quite different, and particularly if you haven’t had any experience in it. Even if you have had experience it’s tough!

Richard Liew: Marketing is not getting any simpler and it seems to be getting more and more fragmented and more complicated. So this is a very real need that every business needs to take care of.

So if there are people are actually watching this thinking, “Oh, this sounds interesting,” what would make them a good MyMarketer business owner?

Paul Wilkes: There’s really two parts to it. One is that you have to be a good marketer. I mean, you have to have a certain amount of experience, in regard to the capability piece. But I think it’s really important to understand that most marketers are good at a certain part or parts of the marketing mix and shouldn’t be scared about the fact that they don’t know something about some other parts of that mix. That’s a benefit of being in this business – there’s pretty much someone in the business that knows something about everything in the marketing mix. So they’re becoming more well rounded marketers as a result of being in the business.

The second part of it is obvious – and it’s probably the most important – you just have to be a nice person. Our business is full of really neat people. Friendly, easy-going people that are that are great to work with, that want to be part of the business and want to be part of this kind of sharing model. And they all have extremely well honed communication skills. We’re in a communications business, and you’re not going to be successful in this business unless you’ve got great communication skills.

Richard Liew: Paul, thanks for talking to us today about this, I think it’s a really interesting model.

Paul Wilkes: Thanks for having us. And if people out there want to talk to us, just make contact either through you, or there’s a Join The Team page on our website at www.mymarketer.co.nz There’s a little five minute quiz that’ll get you thinking about the kind of the things you need start thinking about in terms of making that transition into your own business.

View this interview via NZ Entrepreneur Magazine website:

https://nzentrepreneur.co.nz/interview-paul-wilkes-mymarketer